Outboard Gear Compressor that passes Phantom Power

Being a dimmer tech, I don't have a whole lot of knowledge of audio, is there a single channelcompressor for a vocal microphone that will pass phantom power through? Have a small studio setup and I need to compress the microphone (its a live environment so software side wouldn't help).

Usually compressors are an "insert" patch, meaning they get patched in at line level after the mic preamp. Most soundboards have an insert jack on each channel. This is a patch point that is after the preamp but before the EQ, volume, and other sends. When nothing is plugged into the jack, then it just bypasses the signal. When you patch in a TRS 1/4 jack, you loop out on the tip and loop back on the ring (check your documentation.) So, you would make up a patch cable with a TRSjack on one end and whatever the input and output jacks are on the compressor, and you would patch that into the channel you want the compressor on.

If for some reason compression in the software via your Audiobox isn't an option and you need to go analog outboard the easiest option with the most flexibility is to get an inexpensive single channel preamp and put that in line between your mic and compressor so you can get the signal up to line-level. Output the compressor into your Audiobox. There are a few combined preamp/compressor units out there, though they are far from common.

I've never seen this before, but I can vouch, that it does not have any adjustments, and is probably fixed at "speed metal recorded on vinyl" level, so it is crap. This is really designed to be used for PA announcements in a school gym, and it probably works okay for that, but it will be completely unacceptable for any type of musical performance.

@DuckJordan, Can you explain your setup, and what the end goal is supposed to be? How do the studio and live environment need to work together?

A compressor won't do anything without a pre-amp in front of it. You have to have a rather hot signal in order to drive a compressor so it does its job. What small mixer do you have now? What software are you recording onto?

So it goes from the AT2020 into the Presonus Audiobox 44vsl and straight into an online broadcaster PC using OBS studio. As far as a pre-amp the audiobox 44vsl takes care of that @Footer. My hope with the compressor is to level out the volume between the loud outbursts and the standard talking level the broadcaster is doing. I can only set the gain so high before he clips it and the level of speech is much too quiet to be heard at the level it doesn't quite clip when the guy is loud. Part of the reason the show is popular-ish is due to the outbursts and telling him to keep them down would limit the entertainment value.

A dbx 286s would fill the bill. It has a preamp, with phantom power, along with a compressor, de-essor, and gate, in a 1 RU box. It's intended as a broadcast mic processor, but it would do this job just fine.

A dbx 286s would fill the bill. It has a preamp, with phantom power, along with a compressor, de-essor, and gate, in a 1 RU box. It's intended as a broadcast mic processor, but it would do this job just fine.

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Considering the dbx is only $30 more than the EZmpc1, you can't go wrong buying the DBX!

So it goes from the AT2020 into the Presonus Audiobox 44vsl and straight into an online broadcaster PC using OBS studio. As far as a pre-amp the audiobox 44vsl takes care of that @Footer. My hope with the compressor is to level out the volume between the loud outbursts and the standard talking level the broadcaster is doing. I can only set the gain so high before he clips it and the level of speech is much too quiet to be heard at the level it doesn't quite clip when the guy is loud. Part of the reason the show is popular-ish is due to the outbursts and telling him to keep them down would limit the entertainment value.

Click to expand...

Yes, you have a pre-amp there but the preamp has to be the first thing the signal hits. Because you want processing before your A to D interface you now need another pre-amp. The DBX unit above will do it. With that too, you are going to get a much better pre-amp. I have never been impressed with the range on most "recording interfaces". I always feel like they go from nothing to peaking way to fast... and when the get pushed they really sound thin.